One of the bolder ideas advanced in the discussion was a suggestion by Dean Schmoke that maybe law school should be a two-year program, with the third year something like working for pay. A woman in the audience suggested that in medical school, the student-residents are treated like slaves. Dean Schmoke, a distinguished African-American who served for many years as mayor of the City of Baltimore and now leads the law school of the university created after the Civil War to serve freedmen, replied, "Now, don't go telling people that the Dean of the Howard Law School is proposing slavery."